Autism For Dummies (Lesson #1) -- Verse-Case Scenario by Tony Peyser

[Demeter]

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/peyser/851



Submitted by BuzzFlash on Fri, 04/18/2008 - 8:48am. Tony Peyser
April is Autism Awareness Month and National Poetry Month. I'm a poet
and my son, Jeremy, has autism. Consider the following verse a twofer.

If you have a heap of friends
Autism will make a mess of them
Trust me: you'll be seeing
A rather good deal less of them.

People pulled away from us
Like we'd caused a public scandal
Our problems with Jeremy
They weren't equipped to handle.

My wife & I were soon shunned
Like Quakers, which we found outrageous
Many acted like they believed
That Jeremy's condition was contagious.

But after the shock had subsided
And our social life had vastly receded
We found that the few friends left
Were the only ones we really needed.

And with thinner address books
We saw there were now sufficient spaces
To begin adding the new names
Who would take all of the old one's places.

VERSE CASE SCENARIO

Tony Peyser provides daily poems and weekly cartoons for BuzzFlash and also writes the BuzzFlash column, "Blue State Jukebox." He was a daily cartoonist for the L.A. Times from 1994 to 1997. You can e-mail Tony at [e-mail].



THANK YOU TONY! BEEN THERE, DONE THAT, GOT THE SCARS TO PROVE IT!

[Kajsa]

1. This is great!

He describes very accurately how many react
when they find out a friend's son/daughter
has autism.

One of my son's aunts, his dad's sister
shunned him and excludes him to this day.

It hurt him like hell, but as I told him,
that's her friggin loss!

The friends we have are true friends.

Thanks so much for sharing this great poem,
Demeter.

:D :pals: